After you've felled the tree and dragged it from the site and hauled it to the mill, one of the first things you do is scale it, measure to find out how many board foot it can yield.

Always measure the small end.

According to the Vermont Log Rule, a log with a diameter of 11 inches cut into a nine foot length offers up about forty-five board feet. One that's 36 inches in diameter, same length, should yield 486 board feet.

I've started to teach our daughter, Myra, how to grade and scale and she's shown promise. She has a head for numbers, for recall.

We've had this business for thirty-five years. My father sought out permission from the Bishop to start up before I was born, and he's been milling every season since. Now I'm sawyer and he's more known for his work as a hammer man or sawsmith, fixing our saws and those of nearby mills, Amish and English.

Myra's interest lies more in his job. By the time she was four, she knew the difference between a cross-peen, twistface, and a doghead. She knew how to measure blade tension and dishing when she was only eight. It comes natural to her. To right things. She doesn't even flinch when he pounds out the saws.

Then there's the saw kerf, the width of cut made by the saw. That loss has to be factored in, too. I can tell you exactly what each cut will do. I can tell you what type of cut is best for each kind of job: quarter sawn, rift sawn, flat sawn. I can tell you the type of wood or how wet it is by the sound it makes when it meets the blade.

What I can't tell you is how much my wife Hannah's been hurt by how I've cut her or how wide the kerf is that I've laid upon her heart.

When you marry, scripture says you are joined together, but in truth, to do that you have to be cut away from your family, you cut away from yourself. These cuts are necessary.

But I've done more than that.

I've given her another seed that wouldn't grow.

My wife Hannah's like a quarter-sawn board, the kind that's best for flooring or treads on stairs--it's stable, doesn't easily produce slivers or warp or cup, like flat-sawn wood. Flat-sawn's best only for visual appeal, like my eldest brother's wife. Rift-sawn's the worst cut of all, like my mother-in-law.

That's why it was so hard to take when Hannah slammed the screen door on me after I showed her the casket. I'd built it straight and true from wood I'd myself sanded and stained, rubbed with linseed until my hands were raw.

"Too small," she whispered. Only that.

But little Daniel fit into it easily, despite the thick blanket she'd wrapped him in. Perhaps she thought her love for him might somehow expand his small body, might help him to continue his growth, even underground.

"It's 31 ½ x 13 ¼ x 11 inches," I said, as if to convince her.

Myra stood at my side. Hannah just stared at us and shook her head, back and forth and back, again and again.

I used poplar, known for its straight-grain, uniformity of texture, its light weight - though that never mattered, for when I carried what I'd made to the grave, my boy inside my box, I could barely find strength.

I thought Hannah would be pleased.

She'd been the one to find the small stand of poplars near Sidle Creek. She used to go there and lie on the ground beside the creek, the swell of our son part of her silhouette, and twirl their tulip-shaped leaves round her second finger and search the tops of the trees to spot their blossoms.

But she didn't even touch the box. Turned her head when I told her it was cherry stain I'd used. She'd have none of it.

Note: Originally published in Spring 2016, The Fourth River.

∞

Author's Note

I love flash that sets me square into the unique world of a char­ac­ter, the way he speaks and moves, but espe­cial­ly how he thinks. For this sto­ry, how­ev­er, with this out­ward­ly non-ver­bal char­ac­ter (he speaks aloud only once in the tale and his wife offers up just two words), I had to use a par­tic­u­lar kind of inter­nal lan­guage to set the tone for this util­i­tar­i­an, prag­mat­ic, and sto­ic Amish man who is, we find out late in the tale, griev­ing and pro­cess­ing the death of his child in the only way he can fath­om.

Ear­ly on with my writ­ing, first with an exten­sive study of Jane Kenyon’s poet­ry in my master’s degree pro­gram, I learned that the most com­pli­cat­ed emo­tions could be suc­cess­ful­ly ren­dered through the use of objects. Lat­er, when I had the priv­i­lege of tak­ing class­es with my friend and men­tor, Sher­rie Flick, I re-learned this same strategy–this time with the flash form. Sher­rie would say some­thing like, “Look to the object,” or “objects res­onate,” or “fol­low the object and the sto­ry will come.” Kathy Fish encour­aged these same ideas in the cours­es I took with her where I worked on a draft of this sto­ry. So, the object of this sto­ry was not just the cas­ket but also the tree felled to fash­ion it. I set to work, con­cen­trat­ing my efforts on reveal­ing the his­to­ry of plan­ning and build­ing this object more than focus­ing sole­ly on the his­to­ry of the cou­ple. I felt it was a nec­es­sary ambi­gu­i­ty for the open­ing–Why is the nar­ra­tor telling us this? Why do I need to know?–and I hoped it would set the tale in motion, get you imme­di­ate­ly into this man’s head, so that when you find out what he is suf­fer­ing from, you’ll be entire­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to it. There is no time for you to fol­low him around in scenes. You must know his world view from sen­tence one.

As Ran­dall Brown says in A Pock­et Guide to Flash Fic­tion, “Part of the joy of writ­ing flash is dis­cov­er­ing the undis­cov­ered nar­ra­tive com­pres­sion strat­e­gy.” Long ago, in my first job as an x-ray tech, I found out ear­ly on that a frac­ture may be missed on a frontal view or a side view. It was the tan­gen­tial or oblique view that flushed out most frac­tures. This sto­ry could have been told head on–set the death of the baby up first, throw this cou­ple into a scene togeth­er, and make it hurt. It could have been told from the side–maybe Daniel’s wife’s POV? Instead, I used a third option, the “work-eth­ic view” or “the box.” From that view–in this par­tic­u­lar case, it starts out sound­ing like a guide to milling wood for a project–I thought you might see that the real sto­ry here, com­pressed with­in the con­fines of this “miller-speak,” is not just that the Yoders lost anoth­er child but that Daniel had to some­how feel or some­how prove that, despite anoth­er loss, he is worth some­thing as a man, he is com­pe­tent. With this task of build­ing the cas­ket he could “be of use,” as is the flax in Hans Chris­t­ian Andersen’s clas­sic and haunt­ing tale.

I took a risk fill­ing this piece to the rim with the heavy jar­gon of a miller, a sawyer, but the flash form forces us to take those risks, forces us to cut the piece in such a way that it is small but strong, and stur­dy, and, in the end, maybe even use­ful.

About the Author

Jolene McIl­wain lives and writes north of Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia, in the hills of the Appalachi­an plateau with her hus­band and son. She teach­es lit­er­ary the­o­ry and com­po­si­tion part-time at Duquesne and Chatham Uni­ver­si­ties. Her work has been twice nom­i­nat­ed (as Top 25 and Hon­or­able Men­tion) in Glim­mer Train’s Very Short Fic­tion con­tests and is forth­com­ing in Prairie Schooner. Her flash fic­tion appears in Pure Slush Five and the The Fourth Riv­er where “Seed to Full” was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished. She tweets @jolene_mcilwain.

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